/lit/ - Literature

>>4650516
>Infinite Jest
>1996
>new

>>4602488
I don't think they can hear you.

This thread is still active? You realize that this has basically become a giant ad for the book, right?

Dear Journal,

When did music begin? Did it begin with a question? Or an exclamation? Was somepony laughing? Or sobbing? Was that pony alone? Or was there an audience?

When I first attended Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, I thought that I would find out all of the answers of how and where music began. What I discovered was that the best pieces of us—the artistic, soulful, and melodious pieces—have been lost forever. Equestrian Civilization is over ten thousand years old, and of those ten millennia only the last fifteen hundred years' worth of music has been recorded, preserved, or recited to this day.

What became of the music that is now lost to us forever? How many masterpieces disappeared into the great void of time? Just what kind of prodigies and geniuses exist in the past, and how many of their masterpieces will go unheard? Does the fact that their music no longer resonates in the halls of our kingdom mean that they've lost their worth?

Years ago, I became a student of music theory, thinking that I would find answers. What I found instead was that making music is merely a means of proposing questions with our hearts that our minds can't formulate. Every time we sing or play an instrument, we are searching. Every time we fill the air with notes of rhythm and tonality, we are endeavoring to get in touch with the parts of ourselves that our words cannot contain.

I would like to think that the ponies of ancient times were searching for something just as much as we are in this era. This means to me that even though the music of the past is gone, the drive to simultaneously express and discover ourselves is still there. Our entire civilization is the beautiful encore to a symphony that has fallen on deaf ears, but not on unfeeling heartstrings. So long as we are feeling with music—embodying the same curiosity and ambition of our ancestors—then all that is important isn't forgotten, for we have it locked away in our very pulse.

Today, I play music. I do it because I am also searching. For one, these magical notes that I am endeavoring to construct may be a way to release this curse that has been placed upon me. For another, I am adding to the same heartbeat that has kept a constant rhythm since the beginning of time. So long as I am a part of that, so long as I am making melodies that the Equestrian soul cannot help but dance to, then maybe I have a chance to actually reach somepony.

Maybe, I won't be forgotten.

>>3374645
>but are all the same stories in each??

So /lit/ was made like 1.5 years ago or so, how much time have you spent on here that you would have spent reading? How has it affected how/what you read?

>giving away books to random strangers on /lit/

But sure, post your adress and we can sort shit out (or not).